imagine, right now we could all be crawling over the controversy of romney's own lip syncing of "america the beautiful" and preparing for ted nugent to be nominated as secretary of state. let's get right to our panel now in washington is dana milbank, political columnist for "the washington post," and in philadelphia lehigh university professor james peterson, a contributor to thegrio.com. good afternoon to both of you. professor peterson, as the president was busy today working on immigration overhaul, the gop was trying very hard to stop being the stupid party, to stop being the big bucks party. all the while re-electing their leadership and celebrating a losing candidate with a fancy lunch. so what's wrong with that picture? >> i mean, once again i think they've got this all wrong. i mean, first of all, msnbc's own michael steele outperformed reince priebus in a lot of different ways when he was chairman of the party. so it's interesting reince got another crack at it after all the losses they sustained over the course of this election season. but they just have it all mixed up. they